GlobalSkillsCC

Published by the Lumina Foundation. Draft published January 2011. Authors include Cliff Adelman, Peter Ewell, Paul Gaston, and Carol Geary Schneider. This report attempts to describe what broad body of knowledge constitutes a post-secondary degree at the associate's, bachelor's, and master's level.

By Doug Lederman in the News column of Inside Higher Ed, Jan 25 2011. The Lumina Foundation has released a draft of their Degree Qualifications Profile (see link in article), with broad "degree objectives" for those who earn associate's, bachelor's and master's degrees. This article briefly describes the report and also provides some context, including some criticism from those who work in higher education. See degree_qualification tag for more.

By Melissa Ludwig in San Antonio (Texas) Express-News Jan 21 2011. A pilot program in San Antonio points "students who test at the lowest skill levels toward shorter vocational programs or adult basic education" rather than the remedial classes at community college where they might previously have been assigned. The student profiled participated in a 10-14 week PACE program (combining basic education with college readiness skills) rather than the 4 semesters of remedial classes she would otherwise have been assigned.

By Amy Gerstein, John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. For The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Problem Solution Exploration Papers. This paper explores faculty professional development to address limitations of developmental education.

By Elizabeth M. Zachry, December 2008. Achieving the Dream model of instructional reform implemented for developmental education courses at three community colleges: Guilford Technical Community College in Greensboro, North Carolina; Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Virginia; and Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, Virginia.

A little old, but some basics about how to create community online in a learning community and a blended situation - but some ideas would work for just online

Created by The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A large collection of handouts related to college-level writing. Categories include Writing the Paper (e.g. argument, audience, brainstorming); Citation, Style, and Sentence Level Concerns; Specific Writing Assignments/Contexts (e.g. Abstracts, Speeches, etc.); Writing for Specific Fields.

Teachers whose students described them as skillful at maintaining classroom order, at focusing their instruction and at helping their charges learn from their mistakes are often the same teachers whose students learn the most in the course of a year, as measured by gains on standardized test scores, according to a progress report on the research.

Based on the 1977 book about architecture, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, and three subsequent volumes, this website expands upon the ideas of architectural pattern, looking at community, but also at computer patterns. "A Child's History of Pattern Language" (first click on the pattern link) attempts to make these ideas even more accessible.

While on the surface, architectural patterns have little to do with pedagogy patterns, the underlying ideas here seem very similar to those of GSCC. Also interesting to see how they've built them out on the web.

By Billie Hara, as part of the ProfHacker column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 27 2011. This instructor posits that when students say "Just tell me what you want" (for this assignment), it might mean that the professor has proved him/herself unclear or "untrustworthy" in the course of the semester. There are also interesting comments at the end of the article.

Automated essay scoring (AES) has many benefits such as immediate grading, reliable reporting, and diagnostic feedback. While automation poses certain operational and technical challenges, more states are adopting AES for both formative and summative assessments. This presentation presents empirical data from the state of West Virginia online writing assessments on the reliability and validity of machine scores.

By Michael W. Galbraith, and Melanie Jones in Journal of Developmental Education; 30.2 (2006): 20-27. Author's abstract: This article suggests that a balance of the art and science of teaching is essential if the learning and teaching process is to be a meaningful and rewarding educational journey. This notion is explored through a dialogue, held over a 3 year period, with a developmental mathematics instructor at a community college who discovered that technique alone was not sufficient to becoming a good instructor. An unusual situation occurred as a result of the dialogue: Discussion of research-based literature on college teaching and personal experiential reflectivity merged and resulted in an organizing framework for understanding the artistic and mechanic elements of effective instruction. Full text by subscription. Check with your local library. This is a link to the TOC on the National Center for Developmental Education's website.

By Carl J. Jung (2005) in Journal of Developmental Education; 28.3 (2005): 2-11. Author's Abstract: The guiding premise of this article is that developmental education and learning assistance programs will continue to be undervalued and vulnerable as long as there is no overarching, shared theoretical framework that practitioners can (and want to) call their own. The traditional approach to addressing this theory crisis has been to import theories from outside the field. This article presents an alternative approach. Advantages and benefits of a practice-oriented approach are identified and briefly discussed. Full text by subscription. Check with your local library. This is a link to the TOC on the National Center for Developmental Education's website.

By Jennifer Gonzalez in the Students section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9 2011. Article announces the findings of a just-published early report, "Turning the Tide: Five Years of Achieving the Dream in Community Colleges," looking at five years of progress of the Achieving the Dream program in the 26 schools that joined in 2004. While the article cites that the changes are slow and small, there are bright spots, including the spread of a "culture of evidence" with more sophisticated data collection and analysis.

Help with technology

By Diana Laurillard, London Knowledge Lab, London Institute of Education, Inaugural professorial lecture, February 2008. From the abstract, Laurillard argues for "an education-driven approach to the use of digital technologies to achieve our ambitions for education."

By Anthony S. Bryk in Phi Delta Kappan April 2009, vol 90 (8), pp. 597-600. Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation, argues for a "Design, Educational Engineering, and Development infrastructure...." Abstract available on this page. Full text by subscription. Check with your local library; they might be able to obtain it for you through interlibrary loan.

According to their About page, "MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity." There is also a note on this page that each published course "requires an investment of $10,000 to $15,000....Courses with video content cost about twice as much...."

By Catherine Gewertz, Education Week, February 2 2011. A new report, Pathways to Prosperity, published by Harvard's Graduate School of Education, argues that the "college for all" goal might fail students best suited for emerging "middle skills" jobs (e.g. construction manager or dental hygienist). The researchers feel that many who are not suited for college fall out of the educational system completely rather than pursuing other post-secondary options.